Outsourcing Christmas

By

Anne Kadet

Dec. 21, 2012 9:36 p.m. ET

The holidays are rough for the busy New York professional. Here you are, slaving away at the office to provide the family with food, clothing and a TriBeCa loft the size of a roller rink, and do they appreciate it? No-ho-ho! All they want to know is, how could daddy forget Christmas?

ENLARGE

The logical next step, of course, is hiring someone to trim the tree.
Tim Robinson

Good news: It's not too late to outsource those tiresome holiday chores to an expert. And in New York, believe me, there is plenty of holiday help to be had.

Suppose, for example, you haven't had time to visit Santa at
Macy's
.
Just call V/B Photographers and Vince Pilutis will show up at your house dressed as St. Nick for a private photo shoot with the kids. And, as Mr. Pilutis notes, you not only save time, you avoid the possibility of dealing with an unsavory department-store Santa. "How many times do you end up with some drunken lout doing it because they only need the money?" asks Mr. Pilutis, who is available for Santa shoots through Jan. 3. "I need the money too, of course, but I don't drink!"

That's just the start. You can hire eager NYC entrepreneurs to assemble toys, bake cookies or send cards. This year, I even paid someone to help with the shopping. After all, nothing says "I love you" like hiring a total stranger to pick out the gifts.

I went to TaskRabbit, a web-based errand service that farms out chores to nearly 1,000 local gofers. The holidays are the company's busiest time of year, says marketing head Jamie Viggiano. Customers hire rabbits for jobs like holiday grocery shopping and party cleanup, typically paying about $15 an hour.

It took two minutes to join TaskRabbit and post my job: I needed someone to buy cookies, a gift card, socks and a tie featuring some sort of animal critter. After reviewing four bids ranging from $43 to $102, I chose a super-experienced, highly rated "level 25" rabbit who offered to do the job for $50. According to his profile, he could move furniture, ruminate, meditate, analyze, cook and enter data. "I have a knack for metaphor," he added. I assumed this meant he could pick out a decent tie.

The next day, he hit the streets, and the text messages started coming. On the chocolate-chip cookies, did I want dark chocolate? Double chocolate? Gluten free? And on the tie, "Do whales count as animals?"

The rabbit snapped tie photos with his phone and sent them for approval. Oh, lord. The brown ducks were hideous; the penguins too dopey; the heraldic lions too Louis XVI meets "Death of a Salesman." Finally, I did my own online search and sent the rabbit to Brooks Brothers to pick up a tie with an adorably tasteful walrus pattern. Done. The only odd moment was when he delivered the goods. He was a full-grown man! I'd imagined him as an actual rabbit.

For gift wrapping, I contacted Aurore Rudnick of NeatNYC, a professional organizer and "Holiday Hands Helper." The ultra-preppy consultant arrived at my door with paper, ribbon, labels—she even brought her own tape. Let me tell you, there is nothing more satisfying than relaxing at home while someone else does the wrapping.

After an hour or so, I crept into the kitchen to get some coffee and check in. Ms. Rudnick was crouching in the front of the table, eyeing the tie box the way a golfer eyes a difficult shot. This was going to take a while.

Another hour went by and I took another peek. Now roughly half the gifts were wrapped. "I'm a little obsessive-compulsive," she said. But the results! Every box was bound ship-tight in shiny paper, adorned with red satin bows and candy canes, and labeled in handwriting bordering on the calligraphic. She even added little notes: "Ho ho ho!" and "Merry Merry!"

I paid $90 to wrap 21 presents, plus $30 for supplies. A fair deal. The only problem: I can't bear to see Ms. Rudnick's work destroyed. This year's gift recipients will have to be satisfied with admiring the wrapping.

I bought my tree from Joe Hollywood, the neighborhood guy who sets up in front of the deli around the corner. The 5-foot beauty cost $45, including stand and delivery. But I briefly considered Tyler's Trees, a local service available through Christmas Day that actually sets up the tree in your home, complete with a skirt and stand. The price: $139, $209 or $359, depending on whether you want a 5-foot, 7-foot or 9-foot "Rockefeller" tree. Pricey, but you can order online, which means you never have to leave the office. Not surprisingly, the service is big in TriBeCa and Lower Manhattan.

The logical next step, of course, is hiring someone to trim the tree. Mill Basin decorator Denise Piccolo, whose holiday style has a King Midas flair, charges anywhere from $500 for a single tree to several thousand dollars to deck the entire home.

She'll never forget the New Jersey family that requested four trees on the ground floor alone. But her strangest job involved a Staten Island couple who asked her to wrap every branch of a freshly cut fir with 100 strings of lights. "The husband wouldn't let me tell the wife how much it cost," says Ms. Piccolo of the $1,000 job.

So is there any holiday chore that can't be outsourced? In a final fit of holiday laziness, I posted a second job on TaskRabbit: I needed a woman to attend a Christmas cocktail reception in my stead. "Just show up for an hour, make small talk and say you are me," I wrote. "No one will know the difference."

Hours later, seven TaskRabbits had bid anywhere from $25 to $113 for the job. I even got a note from a disappointed man who wrote, "This is the best task I think I ever read. Too bad I couldn't pull off being an Anne."

I couldn't pull the trigger on this one—Santa wouldn't approve. But maybe for New Year's Eve…

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